The End Of America?
Jeff Culbreath is concerned that there isn’t much time left for our country. He notes that the remanants of Christendom on which we have subsisted are quickly running out:
Today, everyone is a democrat and an individualist. It is forbidden to “appeal to authority” - especially religious authority - in the public square. Everyone is supposed to be an original thinker, and today’s herd of original thinkers has come to the unanimous conclusion that religious authority is illegitimate. You are free to argue for traditional marriage on the basis of natural law, but the original thinkers don’t believe in natural law; neither do they respect any of the great doctors and philosophers who have articulated the natural law; neither do they believe in the Church which sanctions natural law; neither do they believe in the God who established natural law. The original thinkers are a law unto themselves. Their moral frame of reference is a prison of their own feelings and prevailing ideologies, which they don’t recognize but from which they cannot escape.
The only arguments that matter are therefore impossible to make in today’s social climate. And even if they were not, there is no cultural consensus to which we can appeal. A consensus will have to be created anew, and that project will take generations. In the meantime, we are left with a civic polity that has only survived by feeding upon the remnants of a shattered Christendom and is now, finally and dramatically, running out of fuel. Our society’s moral capital is exhausted. All that remains is politics, a contest of wills. Power and money will win this contest: let’s not be deluded.
Jeff isn’t alone. And while I see the argument, I am as-yet unconvinced that the time is upon us. Growing nearer, to be sure. But an end is coming. Has to come. So my question is - what comes after?
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Eventually, God will take away our inheritance and give it to someone else.
This is wishful thinking.
It would be nice if the kind of perversion and degradation which we are witnessing in our society were doomed to short lives by their very nature. But any reading of history shows that cultures can drag along in decline for a long time.
When Augustus came to power in 27 BC, Rome was already a moral cesspool. One of his poilices included encouraging “the traditional family” (sound familiar?), because so many Romans were preferring the dolce vita without marriage or children. He had to discourage “exposure” (ancient form of abortion in which the child was born and then left to die in the street or the wilderness).
And Rome carried on in immoral glory for centuries! (and no, we Christians did not clean it up with Constantine. The majority went on in their pagan ways after he brought Rome into the Church. ) The United States could easily shamble along into the future, aborting it’s young and churning out pornography, for centuries. Our dwindling numbers will be supplemented by immigrants, as happened with Rome.
“But an end is coming. Has to come. So my question is - what comes after?”
I wish someone had an answer to that one. I haven’t a clue. Anarchy, dictatorship, totalitarianism, Sharia law and dhimittude, nuclear war with Russia, a Chinese invasion, unrelenting natural and unnatural disasters … pick your poison.
Anyway, thanks for the link. It almost makes up for not being in your blogroll.
Sorry about the blogroll thing, Jeff. I was trying to keep things uncluttered and just put up links that I read often. At the time, your blog was in hiatus, I think.
If you really want a link, I’m open to bribes.
Just teasing, Steve. My blog is likely to go on hiatus again soon anyway.
“Eventually, God will take away our inheritance and give it to someone else.”
Said Rob, “This is wishful thinking.”
Why wish for this? Better that we have the attitude of Abraham who prayed to God to save Sodom and Gomorrah if even there we five righteous men to be found. Perhaps God is allowing the U.S. to “shamble along into the future” because - thankfully, there are at least “five righteous men” in the country.
Be careful what you wish for.